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Sir Joseph Paxton (3 August 1803 – 8 June 1865) was an English gardener, architect, engineer and Liberal Member of Parliament. He is best known for designing the Crystal Palace, which was built in Hyde Park, London to house the Great Exhibition of 1851, the first world's fair, great public parks such as Birkenhead Park, and for cultivating the Cavendish banana, the most consumed banana in the Western world.
Although the duke was in Russia, Paxton set off for Chatsworth on the Chesterfield coach arriving at Chatsworth at half past four in the morning. By his own account he had explored the gardens after scaling the kitchen garden wall, set the staff to work, eaten breakfast with the housekeeper and met his future wife, Sarah Bown, the housekeeper's niece, completing his first morning's work before nine o'clock. He married Bown in 1827,page 41, A Thing in Disguise: The Visionary Life of Joseph Paxton, Kate Colquhoun, 2004, Fourth Estate and she proved capable of managing his affairs, leaving him free to pursue his ideas. He enjoyed a friendly relationship with his employer who recognised his diverse talents and facilitated his rise to prominence.
One of Paxton's first projects was to redesign the garden around the new north wing of the house and expand Chatsworth's collection of conifers into a arboretum which still exists. He became skilled at moving mature trees. The largest, weighing about eight tons, was moved from Kedleston Road in Derby. Among several other large projects at Chatsworth were the rock garden, the Emperor Fountain, and rebuilding Edensor village. The Emperor Fountain was built in 1844;page 30, The Works of Sir Joseph Paxton 1803–1865, George F. Chadwick, 1961, Architectural Press it was twice the height of Nelson's Column and required the creation of a feeder lake on the hill above the gardens necessitating the excavation of of earth.page 31, The Works of Sir Joseph Paxton 1803–1865, George F. Chadwick, 1961, Architectural Press
The next great building at Chatsworth was built for the first seeds of the Victoria regia lily which had been sent to Kew from the Amazon in 1836. Although they had germinated and grown they had not flowered and in 1849 a seedling was given to Paxton to try out at Chatsworth. He entrusted it to Eduard Ortgies, a young gardener and within two months the leaves were in diameter, and a month later it flowered. It continued growing and it became necessary to build a much larger house, the Victoria Regia House. Inspired by the waterlily's huge leaves – 'a natural feat of engineering' – he found the structure for his conservatory which he tested by floating his daughter Annie on a leaf. The secret was in the rigidity provided by the radiating ribs connecting with flexible cross-ribs. Constant experimentation over a number of years led him to devise the glasshouse design that inspired the Crystal Palace.
With a cheap and light wooden frame, the conservatory design had a ridge-and-furrow roof to let in more light and drained rainwater away. He used hollow pillars doubling as drain pipes and designed a special rafter that acted as an internal and external gutter. All the elements were pre-fabricated and, like modular buildings, could be produced in vast numbers and assembled into buildings of varied design.
In 1836, Paxton began construction of the Great Conservatory, or Stove, a huge glasshouse long and wide that was designed by the 6th Duke's architect Decimus Burton.pages 97-99 Augustus Pugin versus Decimus Burton, by Guy Williams The columns and beams were made of cast iron, and the arched elements of laminated wood. At the time, the conservatory was the largest glass building in the world. The largest sheet glass available at that time, made by Robert Lucas Chance, was long. Chance produced sheets for Paxton's benefit. The structure was heated by eight boilers using of iron pipe and cost more than £30,000. It had a central carriageway and when the Queen was driven through, it was lit with twelve thousand lamps. It was prohibitively expensive to maintain, and was not heated during the First World War. The plants died and it was demolished in the 1920s.
In 1848 Paxton created the Conservative Wall,page 100, The Works of Sir Joseph Paxton 1803–1865, George F. Chadwick, 1961, Architectural Press a glass house long by wide.
In 1850 the Royal Commission appointed to organise the Great Exhibition were in a quandary. An international competition to design a building to house the Exhibition had produced 245 designs, of which only two were remotely suitable, and all would take too long to build and would be too permanent. There was an outcry by the public and in Parliament against the desecration of Hyde Park.
Paxton was visiting London in his capacity as a director of the Midland Railway to meet the chairman John Ellis who was also a member of parliament. He happened to mention an idea he had for the hall, and Ellis promptly encouraged to produce some plans, provided they could be ready in nine days. Unfortunately he was committed for the next few days, but at a board meeting of the railway in Derby, it is said he appeared to be spending much of his time doodling on a sheet of blotting paper. At the end of the meeting he held up his first sketch of the Crystal Palace, inspired by the Victoria Regia House. The sketch is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
He completed the plans and presented them to the Commission, but there was opposition from some members, since another design was well into its planning stage. Paxton decided to by-pass the Commission and published the design in the Illustrated London News to universal acclaim.
Its novelty was its revolutionary modular, prefabricated design, and use of glass. Glazing was carried out from special trolleys, and was fast: one man managed to fix 108 panes in a single day. The Palace was long, wide and high. It required 4,500 tons of iron, of timber and needed over 293,000 panes of glass. Yet it took 2,000 men just eight months to build, and cost just £79,800. Quite unlike any other building, it was itself a demonstration of British technology in iron and glass. In its construction, Paxton was assisted by Charles Fox, also of Derby for the iron framework, and William Cubitt, Chairman of the Building Committee. All three were Knight Bachelor. After the exhibition they were employed by the Crystal Palace Company to move it to Sydenham where it remained until it was destroyed by fire in 1936.
In June 1855 he presented a scheme he called the Great Victorian Way to the Parliamentary Select Committee on Metropolitan Communications in which he envisaged the construction of an arcade, based on the structure of the Crystal Palace, in a ten-mile loop around the centre of London. It would have incorporated a roadway, an atmospheric railway, housing and shops.
Between 1835 and 1839, he organised plant-hunting expeditions, one of which ended in tragedy when two gardeners from Chatsworth sent to California drowned. Tragedy also struck at home when his eldest son died.
In 1850, Paxton was commissioned by Baron Mayer Amschel de Rothschild to design Mentmore Towers in Buckinghamshire. This became one of the greatest built during the Victorian Era. Following the completion of Mentmore, James Mayer de Rothschild, one of Baron de Rothschild's French cousins, commissioned Château de Ferrières at Ferrières-en-Brie near Paris to be "Another Mentmore, but twice the size". Both buildings still stand today. Paxton also designed another country house, a smaller version of Mentmore, at Battlesden near Woburn in Bedfordshire. This house was bought by the Duke of Bedford thirty years after its completion, and demolished, because the Duke wanted no other mansion close to Woburn Abbey.
In 1860, Paxton also designed Fairlawn, 89 Wimbledon Park Side, for Sir Edwin Saunders, Queen Victoria's dentist.
Paxton was honoured by being a member of the Kew Commission, which was to suggest improvements for Kew Gardens, and by being considered for the post of Head Gardener at Windsor Castle.
On 17 March 1860, during the enthusiasm for the Volunteer movement, Paxton raised and commanded the 11th (Matlock) Derbyshire Rifle Volunteer Corps.Ray Westlake, Tracing the Rifle Volunteers, Barnsley: Pen & Sword Books, 2010, , p. 61.
Paxton became affluent, not so much through his Chatsworth employment, but by successful speculation in the railway industry. He retired from Chatsworth when the Duke died in 1858 but carried on working at various projects such as the Thames Graving Dock. Paxton died at his home at Rockhills, Sydenham, in 1865 and was buried on the Chatsworth Estate in St Peter's Churchyard, Edensor. His wife Sarah remained at their house on the Chatsworth Estate until her death in 1871.
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